


Runaway

by domini_moonbeam



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:22:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25551238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domini_moonbeam/pseuds/domini_moonbeam
Summary: Joe is enjoying the gay clubs with Nile. Nicky gets uncomfortable, imagining Joe maybe needs time to do his own thing, and leaves. Joe, of course, hunts him down.A little angsty fluff piece for a tumblr prompt I got asking for a '700 year itch' miscommunication situation!
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 58
Kudos: 1129





	Runaway

He saw him across the room and he knew, deep down, that the world was about to shift underfoot.

Joe put down his drink and leaned away from the bar, the bright lights stroking through the dark club but the throb of music and voices melting back. He leaned forward, onto his toes to see through the crowd, terrified that if he looked away, Nicky would disappear. Joe had gone out to one of the gay bars with Nile tonight. They did that lately. Nicky went sometimes but he didn’t like it—Joe knew that. Nicky didn’t like the noise, the bigness of it, the crowd. He didn’t like casual affection from strangers or the way people danced now. And not liking all those things, made him feel out of time. Joe knew all that even though they had never talked about, because he knew Nicky.

Which is why he knew that look on his face, even though he had never seen it before. Not in nine-hundred years. Nicky had tears in his eyes, making them shine in the lights. He smiled and it was gentle, like he was trying to reassure Joe.

“Wait,” Joe said. It was impossible for Nicky to hear him, not even Nile within arms reach would, but he could read his lips and his soul.

And then the crowd heaved to a new song and he pressed forward, pushing his way through as politely as he could bare. Nicky was gone. He burst out onto the street and looked both ways but there was no sign of him. His mind raced to pick the most likely direction and he started running. Considering how long they had been together, there were very rare occasions that Joe actually lost track of Nicky. They even made a habit of getting abducted or imprisoned together. And when they didn’t get locked up together, the other usually knew where to find them and did.

He ran all the way home but already knew he wouldn’t find him there. He knew it, even if he didn’t want to understand it. He took the stairs two at a time. The apartment was dark and quiet. His cell phone rang in his pocket and he fished it out. Nile. Probably wondering where he disappeared to. He dropped the phone on the kitchen table and walked down the hall to their bedroom, flicking on the light.

He froze.

There was a piece of paper folded on their bed.

He had been killed just about every way imaginable and he was absolutely terrified of that paper. Probably because he could already imagine what was on it. He knew Nicky—that was the worst part. He had known that Nicky was uncomfortable and worried and he hadn’t figured out how to deal with it yet and with everything going on with Nile being new and Andy taking things somewhat slower, he had taken for granted Nicky’s infinite patience.

He walked over slowly and picked up the letter carefully, opening it to run his gaze over that beautiful writing. He’d written it in Arabic. Joe had taught him how a dozen lifetimes ago and Nicky had written him love letters in it since.

It was almost hard not to crumple the page up, not to tear it or throw it, but he didn’t, because it was a marvel, wasn’t it? Nicky had never left him before and the letter was so brutally, perfectly Nicky. He was so gentle in it, so thoughtful and understanding. He offered Joe a break, time apart to do as he pleased for a while, “to live as bright as the sun,” he said. He asked him to look after himself and promised to do the same. Like this was inevitable. Like it was okay. He said he’d be back in a year or so and they could talk, like a year was a day or two.

Joe felt sick, or maybe that was just what being alone felt like? Fuck.

He carefully folded the letter and stomped out of the apartment, taking all of two steps to throw open the door to Andy and Nile’s loft across from theirs.

“Is he here?” he called. He knew he wasn’t. If Nicky meant to leave him, to give him time to scratch whatever itch he thought he had, he wouldn’t hang around. He would know that if he did, they would talk it out and Joe would do anything to make him happy again. He had to disappear if he was going to give Joe the space he imagined he needed.

Andy didn’t have to ask who. “He left a while ago.” There was a definitive way she said it, leaning back against the kitchen counter and watching him without an ounce of surprise.

“You knew he was planning this?”

She shrugged.

“What the hell?” Joe snapped, at least this was someone he could yell at. “You didn’t tell me?”

“Tell you what? He thought you needed some time to do your own thing.” She laughed a little dryly. “He made it sound very reasonable. I mean, you guys have been together for a really long time and the world is a lot different now.”

Joe was not amused and could not tell if she was fucking with him. “Where is he?”

Andy’s thin smile faded.

“ _Andy_.”

She sighed and reached out to the side, pulling a file from one of the stacks. “He asked for work. I gave him a hitlist.”

He took it from her when she held it out and skimmed the target names. “Some of these could take months just to do recon and pin down.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, watching him. “You could just take the time, Joe. You know he’ll be okay and he’ll come back if he said he would.”

Joe looked up at her, startled, shocked, and even more than anything else, offended. “You think I’m going to go out to clubs and fuck around?”

She stared back at him, a smile slowly creeping onto her face. “No. I think you’re probably going to go hunt him down even if _that_ takes the whole year anyway.”

Joe sighed. “Well, I’m glad you haven’t become senile yet.” He held out the carefully folded note to her. “Put this in my storage unit?”

She nodded and took it from him. He didn’t even ask her not to read it. He wouldn’t have cared if she did, but he also knew she wouldn’t.

“Joe,” she added, voice lower, careful, and he paused mid turn to leave. “I don’t think he meant to doubt you. He just…”

“I know,” he sighed and then left.

* * *

It only took him four months to figure out where Nicky had stashed himself away—his base of operations. Unfortunately, he then had to wait for Nicky to come back from whatever hit he was on. Three of the people on the list had already died. Two from long distance shots to the head and one stabbed in a parking garage. All bad people. Human traffickers and warlords.

Joe had been waiting in Nicky’s sketchy little apartment in Istanbul for almost two weeks. He didn’t turn on the lights or go near the windows, just in case his heart would notice and make a run for it. The one room apartment had a small cot, a serial killer board of targets and information, and crates of weapons. But the food was also well stocked because Nicky never liked to be caught without. He had starved one too many times in that first century. He wouldn’t casually deprive himself of food now.

Joe had tried to find some of Nicky’s scent in that little bed, but it wasn’t there. He hadn’t been here in a while, which boded well for him returning soon.

He was sitting in the corner of the kitchen, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of the building, when he heard footfalls in the hallway outside—footfalls he recognized.

Joe practically held his breath, as though not to give himself away. He had been hunting his beautiful son of a bitch for almost half a year, he wouldn’t lose him now. He would chase him down if he ran. He slid slowly, silently, to his feet when those footfalls came to a stop outside the apartment door. The jingle of keys setting his nerves on fire.

The door opened and Nicky walked in with a tired huff, a duffle bag almost half his height long slung over his shoulder. He kicked the door shut, threw the locks on and turned on the lights before he froze. It wasn’t that he realized he wasn’t alone—it was that he realized Joe was there. If it had been anyone else, he would have probably noticed before he closed the door but it was so ground into his being not to question Joe’s presence in any room that he’d been slow to do it now.

He turned, those blue green eyes widening at the sight of him. “Joe. Are you okay?”

“You left me?” Joe had intended to scream it, to cry it, to shout it. But when he saw Nicky there, looking back at him with the exact same expression he would if Joe came bursting into the house when he thought he was out at the store, it came out as a half-laughed question. After almost a thousand years, this man still surprised him—and caused him to surprise himself. And the first thing out of Nicky’s mouth had been to ask if he was okay? He almost cried.

Nicky actually looked shocked and then concerned. “No. I mean, yes, but not like that.”

“Nicolo!” Joe groaned, closing his eyes and scrubbing a hand over his face.

“I was giving you time to… I don’t know, do what you want.” He set his bag down and came closer. “I left a letter.”

“Oh, yes, I got the letter,” Joe nodded, breathing because it felt like the first time he had since that night.

“I know you want to do things. The world has changed so much since we first…” Nicky’s voice tapered off and Joe looked up at him because he heard the pain in that voice, the uncertainty. “I have not changed, Joe. And it would break my heart if you had regrets about your time.” He stood right in front of Joe but didn’t close the space between them. He did that when he thought they were fighting or when he thought Joe was upset with him. “I knew Andy had a list of hitjobs so…So, I thought if you had some time to yourself…” He shrugged and looked away.

Joe sighed and reached out, catching Nicky’s jaw and turning his face toward him again. He studied him and then took that step to close the space between them, hips bumping. He carded his fingers through Nicky’s hair, pushing it back behind his ears and looking him over, like he might have forgotten something. He hadn’t. His hair was a little longer and his jaw a little stubbly, but he was exactly the same. “I don’t want time to myself, Nicolo,” he said in Italian. “I don’t have things I need to get out of my system. I don’t crave time apart from you or the attention of others.”

Nicky sighed, fingering the hem of Joe’s shirt but shaking his head a little. “You love me. But I am the moon and you are the sun. You are so bright and life gathers around you. I know I have your heart, but I could not live with caging it. I know how much fun you were having at those clubs and out with Nile and I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t leave to test you or to make you follow—”

Joe kissed him. It was either that or kill him and Joe had given that up lifetimes ago. He had said all of that in his letter—had explained what Joe had already known, that Nicky wasn’t comfortable but he didn’t want to get in Joe’s way either. He knew Joe would give up anything for him and didn’t want that.

Nicky kissed him back like the time apart had been a decade rather than a few months, his hands clutching at his sides, pulling his body up flush against his, and Joe reveled in all that need, even though he hadn’t really needed any confirmation that his Nicolo had missed him.

“You are a fool,” Joe said when their lips parted and Nicolo sucked air, blinking through tears at him. “Seeing the clubs was enough. I didn’t want more. You have never held me back and I have never wanted for more.”

Nicky stared at him for another second and then kissed him again, holding him close. “Fuck, a year would have been so long,” he whined.

Joe kissed him again, because, again, it was either that or kill him, and he had a definitely preference.


End file.
